Facebook touts diversity initiative

Facebook is looking to diversify.

The annual diversity report that the social media giant published last week showed only modest gains in the representation of women, African Americans and Hispanics. The company says it is committed to making changes to ensure greater representation of those groups, all of which are traditionally underrepresented in tech.

Facebook’s workforce is 36.9 percent female, up from 36.3 percent last year.

Related: Diversity improving but still lagging in tech industry

Whites now make up 44.2 percent of employees, down from 46.6 percent. Asians have climbed from 41.4 percent to 43 percent of the workforce.

Although African Americans account for about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they only make up 3.8 percent of Facebook workers. Latinos, who account for nearly 17 percent of the nation’s population, make up 5.3 percent of Facebook employees.

While accounting for only 5 percent of the total U.S. population, Asians account for an outright majority (52.3 percent) of technical roles at Facebook, while Hispanics and African Americans represent 3.5 percent and 1.5 percent of technical employees, respectively. Less than a quarter of technical workers are female.

In business and sales, the demographics are very different. A majority of employees are women (57.5 percent), while only a quarter are Asian, 8.8 percent are Hispanic and 8.2 percent are black.

In senior leadership roles, about two-thirds are men and about the same percentage are white. Asians make up a quarter of positions and blacks and Hispanics make up 3.1 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively.

The company touted the figures as evidence of progress, but stressed that it was committed to doing more.

“Today, there are more people of diverse backgrounds and experiences, more people of color, more women in both technical and business roles, and more underrepresented people in leadership here,” wrote the company in a blog post.

“Most notably, we’ve achieved higher representation of women in leadership by focusing on hiring and growing female leaders within the company. Over the last several years, the majority of new female leaders were internally promoted. Also, since 2014, we have increased the number of Black women at Facebook by 25 times and the number of Black men by 10 times. And importantly, even as we have grown, we have worked very hard on making Facebook a more welcoming, respectful workplace.”

Read more: 

• Diversity and inclusion highlight list of emerging employer trends
• Shareholders, workers call on Google to fix ‘diversity crisis’
• Diversity, inclusion and belonging: How do we get there?